The performance of a loudspeaker is highly dependent on its interaction with the acoustics of its listening environment. Thus, a loudspeaker that produces a perceived high sound quality in one environment may produce a perceived low sound quality in a second environment. The differences in sound quality may be experienced within a room. The performance of a loudspeaker within a listening environment will interact differently with a room's acoustics when placed at different positions in the room. The performance of a loudspeaker will also be experienced differently from different listening areas within a room. Accordingly, different sound environments (or rooms), and changes in both the position of the loudspeaker and the listening area of the listener can alter perceived sound quality of a loudspeaker.
When a loudspeaker is used in a recording environment, the interaction of a loudspeaker with the recording environment affects the quality of the recorded sound. For example, loudspeaker monitors interact with the acoustics of the recording environment to create an inaccurate account of the audio at the mix position, which makes it challenging to create an audio mix that produces high quality sounds on all playback systems.
The manner and method of creating audio recordings has changed. First, recording and mixing audio on computers without the use of traditional audio mixing consoles is becoming more common. As a result, recording and mixing in non-traditional environments, such as bedrooms, basements, garages and industrial spaces (rather than in control rooms found in professional recording studios) is also becoming increasingly more common.
With the recent movement toward using computers for recording and mixing, a number of features and functionalities provided through the use of mixing consoles have been lost, such as full volume control from the mixing position and the ability to listen to multiple sources (e.g. 2 channel DAT, CD and the output of the recording system). Additionally digitization of the recording signal path has led to the use of digital inputs and outputs (I/O). While input/output (“I/O”) boxes have been designed as the interface to computer recording systems they are not without limitations. For example, I/O boxes do not have input switching and many I/O boxes do not offer volume control. Those I/O boxes offering volume control only provide volume control for analog output. No volume control is provided for digital output. Further, many current I/O boxes are only capable of controlling stereo sound and cannot accommodate surround sound.
Through the use of computers for recording and mixing, both the size and price of recording equipment has been greatly reduced, which has created a movement toward recording and mixing in nontraditional environments. In these environments, working distances may be compromised and interference with loudspeaker performance by room acoustics may be greater, particularly in the low frequency range.
To optimize sound quality of loudspeakers in listening and recording environments, designers of loudspeaker have developed a number of different calibration systems and techniques to optimize loudspeaker performance in an actual acoustic environment. In general, most calibration systems involve adding equalizing filters or correction filters to optimize the low frequency response of a loudspeaker at a particular position in a particular listening environment.
One example of a calibration technique involves taking one or more types of acoustic measurements of a loudspeaker at different listening positions in both an anechoic room and the actual listening environment. Once sufficient measurements are recorded, filter correction coefficients are then derived by analyzing the listening room measurements against anechoic room measurements using different averaging and/or comparison techniques. Although the anechoic measurements for a particular loudspeaker, once recorded, may be stored for recall, all of the above calibration techniques require the acquisition of two separate sets of data—anechoic data and listening room data. All correction calculations are designed to adjust the performance of a loudspeaker in its listening environment to substantially match the performance of the loudspeaker in an anechoic environment.
While some methods compare anechoic data to measured data to calculate filter adjustments, at least one method exists for calibrating a loudspeaker to correct low frequency response in a listening room using only listening room measurements, i.e., the method does not utilize anechoic measurements. While this method does produce a noticeable increase in sound quality, the method involves manually plotting a number of recorded measurements and then analyzing and tabulating the charted results. The entire process takes time (in some examples, up to approximately thirty (30) minutes to complete) and requires the manual implementation of a number of steps. Not only is this calibration method cumbersome, but its success also depends on the absence of human error.
As illustrated above, current calibration techniques fail to provide a simplistic and/or completely automated method for optimizing loudspeaker performance in a particular listening environment based only upon the analysis of acoustic measurements of a loudspeaker in the listening room.
Further, most known calibration methods only correct for low frequency response. When more than one speaker is being used in a listening environment, other corrections may be necessary to create an accurate account of the audio at the listening or mix position. Unless the listening and/or mix position is located at a point equidistant to all speakers, adjustments may also need to be made to the performance of each loudspeaker so that, for example, all speakers contribute equally to the sound pressure level at the listening or mix position. Further, signal delays may need to be introduced so that the sound from all speakers reaches the mix/listening position at the same time. Generally, these types of corrections are made by manual adjustments to the loudspeakers performance (e.g. volume/signal delay). Thus, a need exists for a self-calibrating loudspeaker system capable of not only adjusting the low frequency response of each speaker, but also the sound pressure level and arrival time of each loudspeaker in the system at the listening and/or mixing point.
Although audio recording has changed over the last several years, the design, production and performance of loudspeakers have not been modified to account for the change. A need therefore exists for a loudspeaker and a loudspeaker system adapted for modern recording.